Artists to RIAA: Put money where your mouth is

The constant refrain of the RIAA - that they only pursue illegal music users because they care about ensuring artists get paid - is about to be put to the test.

In the battle against the original Napster, Kazaa and Bolt, the triumphant labels have pulled in millions of quids in damages for music shared over the various services. Artists have been sat waiting quietly for the cheques to arrive with their share of the booty.

None, as yet, have shown up - and so a group of management teams are pondering legal proceedings:

"Artist managers and lawyers have been wondering for months when their artists will see money from the copyright settlements and how it will be accounted for," said lawyer John Branca, who has represented Korn, Don Henley, and The Rolling Stones, among others.

"Some of them are even talking about filing lawsuits if they don't get paid soon."

The labels, of course, are blustering:

Record label sources said corporate bosses are still deciding on how best to split the money. In determining the payout, they said not every artist is owed money and it must be calculated with regard to the level of copyright infringement for each artist.

It's funny that the labels could be quite sure that their products were being shared on the services when they're pursuing the filesharers, but all of a sudden don't seem to have any idea what those products were when they're asked by the artists.

But hang on - there might not be any money at all, come to that:

What's more, these sources said that after the labels recouped their legal expenses, there wasn't much left to pass along to the artists.

We're half expecting the RIAA companies to send demands for cash instead of big cheques to their musicians, so they can chip in some of the costs.

Let's hope no artists get a bit tetchy about how, say, EMI could get USD100million from Napster alone and yet not have any money left over to share with the people whose stuff was being shared in the first place. Or, indeed, anyone gets upset that the labels appear to be shunting the costs of attacking Napster onto the costs of arranging compensation for shared files, when the two pots of money should presumably be separate.